By handing over global leadership to authoritarian China, Trump is creating a world that will almost certainly be hostile to the United States, its prosperity, and its people.
By Michael SCHUMAN
American global leadership is coming to an end. Not because of “American decline,” or the emergence of a multipolar world, or the actions of U.S. adversaries. It is ending because President Donald Trump wants to end it. Nearly all of Trump’s policies, both at home and abroad, are rapidly eroding the foundations of American power. The main beneficiary will be Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who has been planning for the moment when Washington would back down and allow China to replace the United States as the world’s superpower. The fact that Trump is willing to hand the world over to Xi—or even realizes that this is what he is doing—shows that his short-sighted worldview, admiration for autocrats, and obsession with himself are combining to threaten international security and, with it, America’s future.
Trump is choosing to retreat even as the US has outmaneuvered its opponents. President Joe Biden’s foreign policy was working.
By supporting Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion, Biden weakened Moscow so much that President Vladimir Putin had to turn to North Korea for help. His support for Israel in its war with Hamas in Gaza reduced Iran’s influence in the Middle East. And Biden’s strengthening of the US global alliance system pressured and irritated China as the world’s advanced democracies united against Xi and his plans to disrupt the world order. Now Trump is willingly shaking up this hard-won leverage. The supposed chief negotiator is signaling his willingness to sacrifice Ukraine for Russia before formal negotiations begin.
Last week, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called restoring Ukraine to its borders before Russia seized Crimea in 2014 an “unrealistic goal,” indicating that the administration would accept a peace deal that allows Putin to keep part of the nation independent he invaded.
Hegseth also ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine — the possibility of which was Putin’s pretext for the invasion in the first place. That wouldn’t be a bad outcome for Putin after he started a brutal war and actually lost it. But the big winner from such a solution would be China. Because China is Russia’s most important partner, any benefits Putin can reap from his disastrous war advance the global agenda of both dictators. That’s why Xi is scolding Trump. Beijing has reportedly proposed holding a summit between Trump and Putin to resolve the war in Ukraine. Then Chinese construction companies would try to come in and make a fortune rebuilding a devastated Ukraine, which Xi helped Putin destroy by propping up the sanctions-ridden Russian economy.
More than that, Xi surely understands that Trump’s coquetry with Putin offers Xi a chance to disrupt the Atlantic alliance and entrench Chinese influence in Europe. Vice President JD Vance criticized European allies at last week’s Munich Security Conference for marginalizing far-right political parties, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi took the opportunity to portray Xi as the anti-Trump.
“China will certainly be a security factor in this multipolar system and will strive to be a constructive and stable force in a changing world,” he told the audience. European leaders are unlikely to have forgotten that Xi enabled Putin’s war in Ukraine. But if Trump does not guarantee European security, Xi could seize the opportunity to expand Chinese power by offering to fill the gap. Xi could argue that he is able to restrain Putin, protect Ukraine, and maintain stability in Europe. That promise may be empty; Xi may not be willing or even able to restrain a bold Putin.
Yet, abandoned by Washington, European leaders may collectively watch with disgust as Xi keeps the peace. China “would start to replace the US in the role of keeping Russia out of the eastern flank,” Gabrielius Landsbergis, the former Lithuanian foreign minister, recently posted on X. European Union members “in the East would become dependent on China’s protection, and blackmail would spread to the West.”
Trump is giving Xi other options. By withdrawing from the World Health Organization and the United Nations Human Rights Council, the United States is opening the way for China to make the UN system an instrument of its global power. The dismantling of USAid makes China even more indispensable to the developing world. Trump’s bizarre plan to expel Palestinians from Gaza will be a boon to Xi in the Middle East, a Region that China sees as vital to its interests. The US suspension of federal financial support for electric vehicles also helps Xi by hindering American automakers in a sector that Beijing seeks to dominate. China could see the US downsizing as an invitation to take more aggressive action in pursuit of its interests – in Taiwan, but also against other US allies in Asia, including Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.
Trump apparently assumes he can keep Xi in check with tariffs. He imposed new duties on Chinese imports earlier this month. But Xi doesn’t seem particularly concerned. Beijing retaliated, and not just with a gesture of lip service. The reciprocal tariffs covered only a tenth of U.S. imports.
Why fret over a few shipments of stuffed animals when you could be taking over the world? The damage to America’s global standing could be irreparable. The hope now is that the major democracies of Europe and Asia – France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom – will stop the power vacuum that Trump is creating and keep China out. European leaders should not be swayed by whatever deal Trump is preparing with Putin over Ukraine. They can stand firm, continue the fight, and wait for a new administration in Washington to reaffirm U.S. commitments to security. But the course is risky, because in the past, U.S. allies have not been able to assume that Washington will ever restore global leadership, or if it does, that the promises of future presidents will stand.
This uncertainty could force allied democracies to accommodate China as best they can. The Trump administration may be seeking to resolve issues with Putin so that it can then focus limited U.S. resources on confronting China. But this course may only succeed in making China more difficult to confront, because America will be forced to do so without its traditional allies at its side.
Trust, once lost, is hard to restore. Trump’s premise seems to be that what happens in Europe and Asia has little consequence for the United States. Vance invoked Catholic theology (wrongly, according to Pope Francis) to justify a hierarchy of concerns that puts caring for American citizens ahead of the rest of the world. But what exactly is best for Americans? Trump may be right that other powers should do more to mind their own business. But Americans know as well as anyone that what happens on the far sides of the world—whether in Europe in the 30s and 40s or in Afghanistan in the early 21st century—can and often does affect them, even dragging them into conflicts they don’t want to fight. This is not to say that Washington should control every disagreement.
But by handing over global leadership to authoritarian China, Trump is creating a world that will almost certainly be hostile to the United States, its prosperity, and its people. (The Atlantic)
